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Confidence is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.

John Dewey

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John Dewey
Age: 92 †
Born: 1859
Born: October 20
Died: 1952
Died: June 1
Aesthetician
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Professor
Psychologist
Sociologist
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Burlington
Vermont
Dewey
Directness
Meeting
Meetings
Confidence
Courage
Facts
Life

More quotes by John Dewey

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A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.
John Dewey
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Schools should take an active part in directing social change, and share in the construction of a new social order
John Dewey
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If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.
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The activity of the immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated like a human being. His instincts remain attached to their original objects of pain or pleasure. But to get happiness or to avoid the pain of failure he has to act in a way agreeable to others.
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Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
John Dewey
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Of what use, educationally speaking, is it to be able to see the end in the beginning?
John Dewey
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Man's home is nature his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy.
John Dewey
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Various epochs of the past have had their own characteristic struggles and interests. Each of these great epochs has left behind itself a kind of cultural deposit, like a geologic stratum. These deposits have found their way into educational institutions in the form of studies, distinct courses of study, distinct types of schools.
John Dewey
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Any experience, however, trivial in its first appearance, is capable of assuming an indefinite richness of significance by extending its range of perceived connections.
John Dewey
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Liberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general liberty, so to speak, at large.
John Dewey
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The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities
John Dewey
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What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools.
John Dewey
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We talk much more about individualism and liberty than our ancestors. But as so often happens, when anything becomes conscious, the consciousness is compensatory for absence in practice.
John Dewey
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With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say that the child should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness.
John Dewey
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How many students ... were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them?
John Dewey
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A democracy is more than a form of government it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.
John Dewey
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To avoid a split between what men consciously know because they are aware of having learned it by a specific job of learning, and what they unconsciously know because they have absorbed it in the formation of their characters by intercourse with others, becomes an increasingly delicate task with every development of special schooling.
John Dewey
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Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.
John Dewey
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Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative.
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I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.
John Dewey